Carbon
by sing-oldsongs
Summary: Love through the elements. MarkxRoger. Pre-RENT.


_A/N: This is a story from way back in the day—September 2007, to be exact. I don't write for RENT anymore but I realized I have a great many stories up on my lj that aren't on this accout and I thought, well, cross posting is fun and a good way to procrastinate. This was originally written for lj's speed_rent community, for the prompt "chemistry."_

**x**

**10. Neon**

Roger plays in clubs whose neon signs are flickering and burning out. The crowds inside are too large for the cramped spaces, and everyone yells to be heard over everyone else. The pay is lousy, the lighting is bad, and no one expects the performers to have talent, but Roger loves these sorts of gigs despite, maybe because, of all of these things.

One night, he invites Mark to see the Well-Hungarians play. Mark says he'll be there, shows up without his half-finished screenplay, without his camera, without his jacket even though it is November and the city is windy and cold. He watches Roger every second he is on the stage, and after, meets him in the back, among the other bands' guitars and microphones, squeezed in the space behind a set of drums.

Roger told him once that, from the stage, most of the faces in the crowd are a blur. He knows there are people there but he can't make them out; he can't really see them at all. Mark thinks later that their night was the same way, how later he only knew that it had happened, but the details are a blur of lips and teeth and breath and skin.

**x**

**79. Gold**

The only thing of any monetary value that Mark owns is a gold watch that his father gave him for his seventeenth birthday. He still cannot explain the reasoning behind this gift. He has never worn it. Yet for some reason he took it with him to New York, and it sits now hidden in a desk drawer in his room, where he often forgets about it for months at a time.

Roger talks about the watch, not about them. "You should wear it," he says, as he holds it up to the early morning light. "It's nice."

"I don't think it fits my starving artist look," Mark answers. He's wishing Roger had never found it; he's waiting to forget.

Roger tears his eyes away from the glinting watch face and stares, for several solid moments, right at Mark. "Eventually," he says, "there will come a time when you have more than ten bucks to your name. Then you will need this watch to prove that you're not a starving artist anymore."

He knows that Roger isn't lying, that he honestly believes this, but Mark just shakes his head, and tells him to put the stupid thing back.

Eventually, the watch goes to the pawn shop, and the money goes to pay for AZT, and Roger doesn't know, and Mark never tells him.

**x**

**20. Calcium**

The differences are subtle. It is: Roger's hand on his knee under the table. It is: Maureen's jokes and her loud laugh, after that day when she walked in on them. It is: being the one Roger goes to when he steps off the stage, as the dark-eyed groupies touch his arm and smile.

Mark paces now. He's listening to Roger pick at the strings of his guitar, slow and tired, and he's watching the snow slowly falling outside the window. "My mother," he says, and Roger doesn't find it sudden, because Mark's been talking about his mother on and off all day, "she always worries so much."

"She cares," Roger says.

There is no bite of argument in his words, and Mark continues, "But it's always—she picks these random things. Last time I went back, she was always asking about how I was eating: enough calcium, enough vitamins, enough everything? You'd think I was starving."

"We are starving," Roger says. "We have no food."

Mark stops pacing. He walks to the couch and leans heavily on the back of it with both hands. "I don't want to go," he says.

Roger sets his guitar down gently on the floor, then puts one hand over Mark's and says, "I'll go for you."

Mark just shakes his head and says, "I wish."

**x**

**28. Nickel**

Mark thinks being a waiter is the shittiest job in the world, and he tells Roger so, walking back from the restaurant on the first full day of spring.

"It's not worth it," he says.

"You say that every day."

"It's true every day. Look at this," he continues, and takes out a handful of nickels from his jacket pocket. "This was someone's tip. My wallet does not exist for some cheapskate asshole to throw his loose change into."

Smiling is the last thing Marks wants to do right now, but it seems like Roger can't stop. He throws one arm around Mark's shoulder and leans in close. "Here's a secret, Mark," he whispers, "if you hate it so much, you can _quit_."

But he can't quit, because they need the money, and it will be months yet before he is pushed to breaking. All he says is, "Why are you so happy?"

Roger answers in that same whisper, as if he was telling a secret, as if it were just the two of them now and not the whole population of a crowded city street.

"Because I'm with you."

**x**

**80. Mercury**

It's hot and the loft is empty and quiet, and Roger has bought a thermometer. He doesn't give any clear reason why. The air is humid—the sun high, burning through the clouds—and they lie on Mark's mattress, unable and unwilling to move.

Mark's looking at the thermometer, carefully and intently, and Roger is looking at Mark, carefully and intently.

"It is 92 degrees out," Mark says. He is level and matter-of-fact.

"Doesn't feel like it," Roger answers, and stretches, and rolls onto his side. "I think this thing is defective." He reaches out to grab for it, but Mark holds the thermometer out of his reach; Roger leans closer and closer until he is almost on top of Mark, his fingers barely bothering to reach, until they have both forgotten about the thermometer all together, and Mark loosens his grip and it falls to the floor.

They lean over the edge of the mattress and stare at the silver spots of mercury that are clinging together in rounded ovals, like no other substance on earth.

**x**

**8. Oxygen**

Sometimes it seems that, on the list of all the things Mark needs to survive, Roger ranks highest, above shelter, above food, above air.

**x**

**16. Silver**

The first indication he has of her existence is a silver bracelet left on the kitchen table.

For two straight hours, he sits and drinks his coffee, so slowly that it is cold before he's halfway done, and tries to work on his latest project, and stares at the single shining band. It's not very big, not very wide—only someone with a small wrist could wear a bracelet like that.

"Oh, that," Roger says when he asks. "It's April's."

Mark stands up and walks to the sink, and sets his empty mug down with a slight clinking thud. "A—April?" he says. He coughs to cover the stutter. His face is contorted into a frown that he doesn't want Roger to see, so he looks away.

"I met her a couple nights ago," Roger says evenly. "After the show."

Mark nods as if he understands this. When Roger comes to stand behind him, tries to put a hand on Mark's shoulder, Mark shrugs him away. A few minutes later, Roger leaves.

**x**

**6.**

He took a chemistry class once, in high school—a long, dull, hour taken from his life every day for a year—but one experiment they did, he still remembers. He lit a flame, and then sprayed clear liquid from bottles marked with the names of different elements, into its center. Each one made the flame turn a different color: green, purple, red.

That's how it is with this boy. When he closes his eyes and thinks, he sees those flames, he sees those colors. It is beautiful.


End file.
